Meta

Day: August 31, 2011

Nadine and Frank we already know are making unsubstantiated attacks on people doing difficult jobs. Louise has decided that she should support their attacks and also make up liesabout her parliamentary colleagues while she’s at it.

Attacking MPs I can forgive, party politics is such fun after all. But what really tipped the scales in her favour was supporting the restriction of choice in abortion advice in the name of increasing the choices of women.

While I’m talking about abortion, I’ve always wondered why certainliberals are so opposed to abortion.

So we have a couple of strands to liberalism which I think make good public policy and good personal philosophy.

The key thought – and although most proper philosophers think Mill overrated, he is the go-to guy for my-first-liberalism-workshops – is that you shouldn’t harm other people or restrict their actions unless they’re going to harm you or someone else. Even if they are doing something which you think is a bad idea, like smoking, you should leave them to it. A lot of the debates on abortion really hinge on whether you think a Zygote, Foetus or Embryo is a person who needs protecting or not.

But the harm principle isn’t really the foundation of liberalism, the foundation is the thought “what if I’m wrong?”

That is why we shouldn’t interfere with the actions of others, because my judgement is, in general, only likely to be as good as yours. In specific cases your judgement about your life is, as a rule, going to be better than my judgement about your life.

I don’t have the necessary information to decide things on a case by case basis for you, so it should be left to you. I think that abortion is one of those subjects where even the most voracious critics really have to consider “what if I’m wrong? What is a Zygote/Foetus/Embryo isn’t a person”

Decisions should generally be left to those with the most information and the best incentive to get the decision right. This is a pretty basic, even Hayekian, point. That means, especially with respect to abortion, the woman involved. I don’t think anyone has any more incentive to become au fait with the morality and practice of abortion than a woman considering one.

You might disagree with the decisions of women who choose to have abortions, but they are in a much better position to make that decision than you. Opposing abortion is in much the same ballpark as supporting the smoking ban, the absolute certainty that an outsider knows the best.

So Nadine and Frank, I hope I’m on first name terms, want to restrict women’s rights to an abortion. They aren’t being honest about their intention, nooooooooo, they’re only thinking about the women! They are leading with mendacious attacks on BPAS and Marie Stopes who provide both abortion and counselling to those considering abortion.

Nadine and Frank’s argue that this is a conflict of interests and that BPAS and Marie Stopes actually hate women and manipulate women into having abortions when they don’t really want them for ideological and pecuniary purposes. A pretty vile accusation, even by Nadine’s standards.

About 20% of women who get advice from BPAS don’t get abortions, I will take Nadine and Field seriously when either 1) Hell freezes over or 2) They provide a serious study quantifying the effects of this conflict of interest. If BPAS and Marie Stopes are providing bad advice it will show up in the number.

Basically put up (some empirical evidence) or shut up (and leave us alone).